...It was a mess! Basified MHRB powder is the consistency of grainy used motor oil and about as fun to handle. Not looking forward to scrubbing that out of my separatory funnel.

But more importantly, after adding salt and extracting with 100ml of clean heptane, I only got a small amount of as-yet unidentified material precipitated out. I haven't taken it out of the freezer yet, but after 24 hours it's still floating suspended in the heptane rather than collected on the bottom or sides of the dish.

I'll give it a few more hours, and then remove a sample of heptane to evap off and see what I have. This is good news to me though, since it suggests that after theee (four?) acid washes, there was less than 100mg of spice left in that 50g of MHRB (reduced to 30g after the acid cooks). My yield from the acidified (filtered) tea stands at just over 2%. Not bad for a first try!

And, given how messy and annoying the basified MHRB is, I'm okay with that much loss if it means not having to put that sludge through my sep funnel. Ugh.

TMYK!

Yeah, I'd never put basic sludge in my sep funnel. (Come to think of it, maybe I did once back in the very early days and came to that conclusion the same way that you have )

This is another good reason for all those teks with turkey basters and the like.

All in all , it's good to hear confirmation that acid boils alone are effective enough - and also that your bark was of good quality. Nice work.